Interim Census Bureau Report Shows Red States on a Roll

When we moved from Illinois to Florida in June 2017 one of the first things I noticed was how many cars had out-of-state license plates. It was remarkable. I’d never seen anything like it. What is even more remarkable is that it hasn’t changed! When my wife and I are driving together I’m always pointing out cars from everywhere but Florida. I don’t know if it’s been all 50 states, but if not it’s close. I’ve even seen Hawaii and Alaska! I learned at one of our county GOP meetings earlier this year that 1,100 people a day are moving to Florida, and something like 80 percent are moving to the greater Tampa Bay area where we live. It’s funny to hear the locals complain about the annoyances that come from a growing population, but I was born and raised in southern California, and we lived in the Chicago area for 17 years, so the crowds don’t bother me so much.

There is, however, something to be learned from this phenomenon that speaks to the dynamics of the times in which we live. I came across this piece that most Americans know is a fact even if they don’t know much: “Interim Census Bureau Report Shows Red States on a Roll.” Here are a some takeaways from the report:

Even with possible fudging, the Census Bureau’s latest interim report shows that Blue states are losing population while Red states are gaining population.

As in the old divide between Communist East Germany and the free West Germany created by Konrad Adenauer after World War II, people migrate towards freedom. In the wake of the great Wuhan Pandemic lockdowns, it is no surprise that more people chose to move. Unlike Germany, there is no wall to prevent internal migration within the United States toward freer states.

The South is now the largest population area in the U.S. The Northeast and Midwest lost population “due to negative net domestic migration.”

Both Red and Blue states appear to be doubling down on their governing strategies. Red states are increasing job opportunities, while Blue states look increasingly to the federal government to bail them out of the mess caused by fleeing taxpayers.

Over the last five years many told me these people coming from blue states like California and New York were going to turn red states blue. Nope! I intuitively knew that wasn’t the case given the reasons we left Illinois, in addition to the weather, had to do with the Democrat dysfunction in Illinois. And this was when Florida was still considered a “tossup” state and could go either way. Had 30,000 people voted differently for governor in 2018, Ron DeSantis would not have been governor and Florida would have turned into a Covid hellhole like other blue states. Thank God it didn’t!

Since we moved here I heard about the growing Republican registration advantage over Democrats which proved my intuition was correct. As you can see from the chart, when we moved here the Democrats had a 250,000 plus advantage, now it’s Republicans 350,000 plus! That is amazing, and speaks to the genius of the Founding Fathers of the great American republic (it is not a Democracy).

Given the challenging times in which we live it’s easy to be a David Doomer or Negative Nellie or Debbie Downer. It often appears all lemons with no lemonade, glass definitely half empty, if that. I choose not to see things that way because of God’s providence, and that America’s founding and blessings are not an accident. All of America’s Founders and the founding generation, even those many claim were Deists, believed America’s birth was ultimately God’s doing. It was absurd anyone could possibly think these poor little colonies could be any match for the mighty British Empire. In a book I recently read, The Indispensables, this mindset was put well:

“The madmen of Marblehead are preparing for an early campaign against his Majesty’s troops,” scoffed a Loyalist newspaper in early 1774, skeptical of the idea that Americans could threaten the most experienced and skillful military professionals on the planet at the time.

We tend to look back at America’s founding as inevitable, but it only was in God’s mind. From a human perspective it looked impossible. For this reason the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence thought they were very likely signing their death warrant. Benjamin Franklin captured the frightening reality of the moment with his statement on the signing, “We must all hang together, or most assuredly, we will all hang separately”

But they didn’t hang, and via that Declaration and the Constitution in 1787 gave us the most incredible experiment in republican government in the history of the world. In effect, the red migration is a continuation of that experiment that I believe will allow it to continue for generations to come. Doomers think I’m nuts and it’s already over given what’s happened in the last two years, but I very much beg to differ.

There are many reasons for my optimism, but one is the nature of the republic the Founders created seen in this red migration. The concept known as federalism gives Americans an escape valve. The way such a valve works in a container is when pressure builds up to a dangerous level (as in a steam boiler) it opens automatically to let out steam; the states are that escape valve.

The struggle at the founding of America was how to get 13 separate sovereign colonies to unite to form one government. Some founders wanted a stronger central government, and others stronger state governments. The latter group was more influential initially given how skeptical all the founders were about centralized power in government, and the first governing document of the United States of America, the Articles of Confederation reflected that. Adopted in November 1777, it proved to not work very well in practice. This gave the Federalists the leverage to create a new constitution with a stronger Federal governement which was ratified on September 17, 1787.

States for most of American history had a large measure of sovereign power, but over time as the Federal government grew states allowed their constitutional prerogatives to languish. Thankfully, what the Founders created still works pretty much as intended, and as the Federal Leviathan has become increasingly tyrannical, people in blue states are not putting up with it. Even red areas of blue states have gotten fed up and are voting to succeed from those states.

Back in the ‘80s during the Reagan era a line became famous among conservatives: Being a liberal means never having to say you’re sorry. No matter how much misery and destruction progressive leftist policies create progressive leftists double down and push more such policies. It seems tens of millions of Americans have had enough of it and are voting with their feet. Thankfully that makes it much less likely they’ll have to “vote” with their guns.